I'd be interested in hearing what the thinking behind it was, though. Presumably there's a reason why they did the formula this way; a deliberate decision to make brand new teams with only one win rank higher than older teams with more wins.

I'd be interested in hearing what the thinking behind it was, though. Presumably there's a reason why they did the formula this way; a deliberate decision to make brand new teams with only one win rank higher than older teams with more wins.

Pretty much any ranking that considers number of games played will be rather bad at judging the order at low numbers of games played.

And if you based it pure win% 1-0-0 is a 100% win rate. So it would be 'better' than 100-0-1 or 100-1-0. So how ever high you factor the number of games played in, cahnges the record which is the first one that is better than the 1-0-0 record.

I'd be interested in hearing what the thinking behind it was, though. Presumably there's a reason why they did the formula this way; a deliberate decision to make brand new teams with only one win rank higher than older teams with more wins.

If its the formula I think it is, the basic idea is that it uses a scaling portion of your win% - scaled by the number of games you've played.

Lets say it starts at 50% and scales up until the point we feel is an "acceptable" number of games played to really rank you on... say... 20. That means a 1-0-0 record is ranked as though the person had a win% of 50%...

But it also means if your win% is mediocre and your games played is below that threshold, you may rank below that. 5-2-3 is 66% win rate, and only 9 games played. If the relationship was linear (which it isn't, but should be, but that's another topic altogether!) and we used the sample numbers from above, that'd mean your ranking would be 72.5% of 66%, or the equivalent of 47.9%, which is lower than the 1-0-0's 50% of 100% which is 50%

Friendly Reminder: Correlation does not equal Causation - tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids if it'll help.